Swansea v Millwall

keith margam · Apr 28, 2024

Swansea v Millwall Sat 4 May 12:30

Our final game of the season next Saturday. An early kick-off, same time for every club, so there will be no advantage of knowing other teams results for those teams involved in promotion and relegation.

Millwall will be a tough game but we are made of sterner stuff lately and come into the game off the back of three wins and an excellent draw at Norwich last time out.

It all came together for relegation threatened Millwall when their ex-manager Neil Harris returned to the club on 21 Feb as head coach on an 18 month contract.

He replaced former Chelsea and Everton assistant coach Joe Edwards after a run of 7 defeats in 8 games, with a total of 11 defeats in his 19 games in charge. Edwards had taken over from long serving manager Gary Rowett last November (Rowett is presently interim manager at Birmingham)

The Lions were looking sick when Harris arrived. They were sitting 21st in the table, one point above the relegation zone when he took over.

In his 12 games in charge so far they have W7 D2 L3, with a 58% win rate. Those 3 defeats were coincidentally all away to Yorkshire clubs, Leeds, Rotherham and Huddersfield.

Both teams are in good form recently ....

Last 6 games:

Swans P6 W3 D1 L2 F10 A5 Pts10

Millwall P6 W4 D0 L2 F7 A4 Pts12

....and in top form the last 4 games:

Swans W3-0, W1-0, W4-0, D2-2 Pts10

Millwall W1-0, W3-1, W1-0, W1-0 Pts12

Nothing riding on this match except pride, both teams now clear of relegation so no pressure on either side.

Swans will want the win to reach the 60 point mark and round off the season in style after the most nerve wracking season for years.

Luke Williams the saviour, rescuing us from the jaws of relegation and showing us what this team is capable of last several matches.

He said when he came here that we would not be relegated and reiterated it many times. He has proved his critics wrong in that respect, me included.

keith margam · May 4, 2024

Swansea 0 - Millwall 1 (De Norre 72’)

Swans: Carl Rushworth, Josh Key, Ben Cabango, Matt Grimes (c), Jamie Paterson (Yates 74), Josh Tymon, Charlie Patino (Walsh 61), Liam Cullen, Ollie Cooper (Lowe 61), Bashir Humphreys, Ronald (Abdulai 73)

Unused Subs: Fisher, Kukharevych, Wood, Govea, Lissah

Millwall came, they saw, and they conquered.
The tenth home defeat of the season for our long suffering fans.
For comparison relegated clubs Birmingham had 7 home defeats, Huddersfield had 9 home defeats and Rotherham had 10 home defeats. Lucky we had better away records than those three or we could have been there at the bottom with them.

Grimes missed a penalty, putting it in exactly the same spot as last week’s penalty against Norwich, Sarkic knew exactly where it was going and saved easily.

That was our highlight of the match, the rest best forgotten as we huffed and puffed and had no idea how to break down Millwall’s organised ten man defence. They sat back waiting for us to make a mistake. They bullied us and fouled us with no protection from the ref. Our small players had no chance. We continued our odd tactics of crossing the ball to little Cullen, alone up front, and easily gobbled up by their giant defenders or goalkeeper.

Strangely two loanees played, Patino and Humphreys, both return to their parent clubs after today, and were picked ahead of our own players Walsh and Wood. Darling and Fulton were apparently injured.

We are not creating enough chances, and the ones we do manage to create we are not taking. We are blunt up front and lack guile in midfield.

Let’s see what the summer brings.